Photonic Analog-to-Digital Converters

This report addresses the development of photonic analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) based on InP technology, a path that could lead to a fully integrated photonic ADC. The historical background of electronic ADC's is followed by a detailed description of photonic ADC architectures pursued by the SNDP in-house Photonic ADC team. The development and the importance of the key components are also presented, namely lasers, modulators, and quantizers. It was initially anticipated that a demonstration of the photonic ADC could be made available for the AFRL Monobit cueing receiver; however, the program was ended before this goal could be achieved. This report summarizes the results obtained up to that point. The original document contains color images.